THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
creeping over the endless windfalls I got close to him without being 
detected. Then he suddenly started up wind and I was able to follow him 
for more than a mile by scent alone, so powerful was the aroma that came 
from him at this season. Eventually he heard another bull “ whistling ” 
and started off at a slinging trot to meet him, when after an hour I lost 
him and nearly got bushed myself, returning to camp in a humble frame 
of mind. 
When travelling, a wapiti, like a caribou, walks very rapidly, and if you 
are to overtake him you must run, and run fast. That is not easy unless 
the deer is in a semi -open country, for the western forests are so dense and 
so plentifully bestrewn with dry and fallen timber that it is no easy task 
either to advance quickly or without noise. A novice would think that 
so large an animal as a wapiti bull, furnished with great upstanding 
horns, could with difficulty force his way through the maze of obstacles 
without making a terrible row, but such is not the case. When alarmed 
there is usually one thump and a crack, and then, if you are so lucky as 
to see the bull, you will notice what an expert at timber craft he is. He 
leaps over big logs with ease, flicks his head from side to side as if his 
40 lb. horns weighed nothing, never touches a growing twig or one that 
will not break, and vanishes at full speed without making a sound. He 
knows his home as you with all your skill and the adjuncts of quiet footgear 
can never know it, and once alarmed at some distance he will beat you 
every time. 
I was nineteen when I first went to hunt the wapiti. Needless to say I 
made every mistake it is possible for youth to make and yet Fortune was 
kind and gave me some beautiful heads after I had given up all hope of 
obtaining them. It is a truism that we enjoy most those things in life 
which we have worked for, and I did work pretty hard to go to the Rockies. 
I had saved a little money from drawings done for the “ Graphic ” and 
other newspapers, but how on earth I was to get the £100 still required 
completely beat me for a time. At the psychological moment a good angel 
sent Henry Seebohm, the naturalist, to see my birds and he at once gave 
me a commission to draw thirty pictures for his “ Charadriidae.” This, 
with my pay in the militia, totalled £120 and the money was won. Every 
morning I rose at five and did a drawing of a wader before going on parade 
at 6.30 a.m. and in a leaky Government tent art was not a joy. Three weeks 
later my brother and I set out from Rawlins on a drive of 350 miles over 
the prairies and bad-lands. We had many adventures and nearly died of 
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